Today's business and finance round up 25th August 2022
UK independent from Russian energy for first time
25th August 2022
Bite-sized business news from the UK and beyond
Good morning Last year fintech Atom Bank made headlines for becoming one of the first major UK companies to introduce a four-day work week with no change in pay. Yesterday the company revealed that there had been a 49% increase in job applications, higher staff retention, fewer sick days and almost all staff say they can accomplish everything they need to in four days.
Today's stories
UK independent from Russian energy for first time
Twitter’s whistleblower woes
ENERGYUK independent from Russian energy for first time
Zooming out: Europe's energy crisis is deepening. Yesterday the German government approved a set of energy-saving measures for the winter which will limit the use of lighting and heating in public buildings. The country wants to reduce gas usage by 2% through the new rules.
Other stories to keep you in the loop
Union calls for minimum wage to be raised to £15 an hour 'to put an end to low-pay Britain'
Mastercard to bring Bitcoin payments to high street stores
British Gas to donate 10% of profits to help cut bills
Asda to remove best before dates on 250 products in stores across the UK
Facebook bug spams celebrity comments to newsfeeds
US forgives $10,000 in student loans for millions
Peloton strikes deal with Amazon to sell its fitness equipment and apparel
Chip shops face 'extinction' amid cost of living crisis
TECHTwitter’s whistleblower woes
What happened?Twitter’s in the spotlight (again) after a newly released whistleblower report alleged that the company’s security policies are far from secure.How did we get here?This week former head of security Peiter Zatko filed a 84-page report accusing Twitter of everything from reckless cybersecurity negligence to underreporting spam-bot accounts. Zatko had joined Twitter in 2020 to help build its security division but was let go in January for “poor performance.”Among the claims of poor security are that:
Twitter lied about its spam and fake accounts being less than 5%.
Execs don’t have the resources to know real numbers, nor are they incentivised to find out.
Leaders have misled Twitter’s board and the government about security vulnerabilities, including those that pose national security risks.
The report could prove helpful to Elon MuskIf Zatko’s claims are found to be credible, it could not only help Musk — who claims he abandoned his $44bn Twitter purchase after it failed to provide info about fake accounts - but also mean big regulatory fines.Twitter’s security issues are piling up. In 2020 it suffered a major celeb hack that compromised blue-check accounts from President Biden and Kim Kardashian to Uber and Apple. Despite ramping up security, the company had another hack last month that exposed the data of over 5m users.
Stat of the day
Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years
Interesting links from around the web
The secret iPhone button you probably don’t know about
12 ways to make keeping fit more affordable
How to score a seat upgrade on your next flight
